RESIDENT IDEAS WANTED AT COMMUNITY BUDGETING PROCESS

RESIDENTS INVITED TO COMMUNITY BUDGETING PROCESS

SOMERVILLE – Mayor Joseph A. Curtatone
invites Somerville residents to participate in a Community Budgeting process focused
on four key investment areas identified by the community in the SomerVision
plan: Recreation, Public Health, Arts and Culture, and Civic Engagement
including Immigrant Outreach.

While areas including education,
infrastructure, public safety and public works remain budget priorities,
resident feedback and values reflected in the City’s 20-year comprehensive
plan, SomerVision, have indicated that residents also want to see enhancements
to the key areas listed above. To begin this work, for the first time, City
officials will engage residents in a Community Budgeting process beginning with
the Fiscal Year 2015 budget. Three public meetings will be held to help put
these goals into action. At each, fun (yes, seriously, fun) interactive
activities will help residents learn more about how municipal budgeting works. Feedback
will then be gathered to help guide the investments made both for the fiscal
year 2015 budget as well as for long-range planning for these four key
SomerVision goals.

“As I said in my inauguration
speech, when this year’s budget is presented to the Board of Aldermen, it will not
be my budget, it will be our budget,” said Mayor Curtatone.
“This budget and our long-range fiscal planning should reflect what the
Somerville community wants to accomplish and what we value. To guide the
investments we make, we spent three years asking the community to identify
goals and values via SomerVision. Now, to put those goals into action, we need
your ideas—the crazier the better—and by ‘crazy’ I mean innovative, creative
and outside-the-box thinking. In other words, the kind of ideas that make us
Somerville.”

To put potential investments into context and to help
increase budget literacy, participants will have a chance to spend “Somerville
bucks” on City services and compare their spending to an actual City budget.
City officials will also share information about the decisions that go into making
the budget, various spending and revenue constraints, and the trade-offs that
have to be made in funding services and programs (again, yes, seriously, this
will be fun). Following short, dynamic PechaKucha-inspired
presentations around Recreation, Public Health, Arts
and Culture, and Civic Engagement/Immigrant Outreach, residents will take part
in brainstorming and idea-gathering activities for enhancements in each area.

“Arts Council programs can include
so many things, from large festivals like ArtBeat, to cooking classes, youth
programing, public art, and policy work to promote the arts,” said Arts Council
Director Greg Jenkins. “Given the diversity of what we do, we really need to
hear from residents about what they’d like to see more investment in and get
their creative ideas around new things we could try.”

Ideas gathered at the meetings and
via additional community outreach will then be put to vote via a community
survey. The Community Budgeting webpages on the City website also offer an
opportunity to learn about the budget and take the post-meeting surveys. Visit
the webpage at www.somervillema.gov/ourbudget and follow www.facebook.com/SomervilleCity and www.twitter.com/SomervilleCity for updates.

This year’s meetings represent
Phase I of the City’s Community Budgeting effort to translate general
SomerVision goals into concrete plans. Further discussions of the four key
areas for 2015 as well as other SomerVision priorities will be addressed at future
Community Budgeting sessions.

“No idea is too big or too small,”
said Mayor Curtatone. “While we are specifically looking for community input on
our fiscal year 2015 investments and projects, we are also looking to set our
course for the long-range as well. So whether you’d like to see more language
interpreters at public meetings right away or if you want a community center
built in the future, we want to hear your ideas. SomerVision is not just a
document to set aside to gather dust and to point to when we talk about
adhering to the community’s values. We will work to ensure that we follow
through on the vision and goals it sets forth. These meetings are a step toward
realizing specific priorities, and the information we gather will be fully
integrated into our planning.”

Community Budgeting Meetings
will be held on:

·        
Monday, Feb. 24 (snow date
Thursday, March 6), 6:30 p.m., at the Capuano Early Childhood Center, 150 Glen
St.;

·        
Thursday, Feb. 27 , 6:30 p.m., at the West Somerville Neighborhood School, 177
Powderhouse Blvd.;

·        
Saturday, March
1
(snow date Saturday, March 8), 11 a.m., City Hall, 93 Highland Ave.

Each community feedback session will offer the same content,
and each has been scheduled before department heads have to submit their final
budget proposals so that resident input can be considered.

–
END –

Contact:

Jackie Rossetti 617-625-6600,
ext. 2614

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